Traditional American Government textbooks are expensive and often unpopular with students. New technologies and Open Educational Resources (OERs) open up the potential for change, but questions of quality are ever present: can OERs really help students learn better, or are they just cheaper? I developed an OER based on original sources and…

The purpose of this study is to explore K-12 teachers' awareness of open educational resources (OER) as well as their perceptions of its potential opportunities and challenges for teaching practices. Data were gathered from 99 online survey respondents and six interviewees in this study. Findings showed that teachers are aware of OER to a certain…

Enthusiasts and evangelists of open educational resources (OER) see these resources as a panacea for all of the problems of education. However, despite its promises, their adoption in educational institutions is slow. There are many barriers to the adoption of OER, and many are from within the community of OER advocates. This commentary calls for…

Wiley, David; Webb, Ashley; Weston, Sarah; Tonks, DeLaina – International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017

This article explores the relationship between open educational resources (OER) created by students for use by other students, the long-term sustainability of the movement toward OER, and the success of students who use OER created by other students as part of their core curricular materials. We begin by providing definitions and a broader context…

Rao, Allen; Hilton, John, III; Harper, Sarah – International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017

Over the past decade, great progress has been made in improving the quality and availability of Open Educational Resources (OER). OER proponents often discuss the ability for users to revise and remix OER to make them more suitable for local contexts; however, much OER goes unmodified. This note from the field examines the efforts of NetEase…

Teacher educators are confronting myriads of challenges in identifying and utilizing the Open Education Resources (OER). This study is intended to analyze the perception and dilemmas faced by teacher educators in integrating OER for teaching. The conceptual frame work of the study is focused on teachers' access and utilization of the online…

Open educational resources (OER) can make educational resources widely available to all students and educators for free; however, OER are still untried in many academic programmes in higher education. This article reports a case of adoption of an open access textbook for an introductory information systems course and discusses the process and…

The open education movement has resulted in the proliferation of content that is freely produced, shared, remixed, and reused by instructors in various disciplines throughout the world. However, little is known about whether or not English as a second language (ESL) instructors in the United States (US) are taking part. This study reports on the…

Cooney, Cailean – International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017

This article reports findings from a study conducted with students in three sections of a Health Psychology course that replaced a traditional textbook with open educational resources (OER) as the primary course material. The purpose of the study was to learn how OER impacted students. Data were collected in Fall 2015 with students from New York…

Open educational resources (OERs) are becoming increasingly common as a tool in education, particularly in medical and biomedical education. However, three key barriers have been identified to their use: 1) lack of awareness of OERs, 2) lack of motivation to use OERs, and 3) lack of training in the use of OERs. Here, we explore these three…

As the costs of scholarly and educational publications skyrocket, open educational resources (OER) are becoming an important way to provide content and enhance the teaching and learning experience. Librarians have a key role to play in developing, advocating, and managing OER. For many librarians, however, championing OERs means adding an…

In the global movement towards open knowledge society, open educational resources (OER) have become a prominent contributor as a medium of education, research and training. In India, the phenomenon of OER is still in nascent stage. Although the country has been massively investing on growth and usage of ICT, it still requires acceptance of OER as…

The movement toward open education is requiring educators to expand and update their practice in order to keep up with the new demands being placed on them. This study explored how educators can engage in meaningful learning opportunities, which will facilitate the creation of expertise and knowledge, through the use of open education resources…

Kwak, SuBeom – International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017

Since 2005, open educational resources (OER) have played a key role in K-12 education in South Korea; so far, however, there has been little discussion about OER efficacy in South Korean K-12 education. In the meantime, South Korean education has been attracting a lot of interest around the world. Former U.S. President Obama's comments about South…

This paper examines three new tools--a framework, an heuristic and a lens--for analysing lecturers' adoption of OER in higher educational settings. Emerging from research conducted at the universities of Cape Town (UCT), Fort Hare (UFH) and South Africa (UNISA) on why lecturers adopt--or do not adopt--OER, these tools enable greater analytical…